(M)an: Dude! Can anyone touch Chris Christie?
(D)ude: Man! If not anyone, Chris Christie will touch
himself.
M: Dude! Touchdown! If anything, he already did by attending
Howard Stern’s sixtieth birthday party as well as the Super Bowl.
D: Man! What was he doing there? Is that the new way to
serve New Jersey constituents still suffering from the $1.8 billion dollar
relief money pocketed by Christie et al?
M: Dude! Perhaps, that is, if you are the presiding officer
of the Republican Governors’ Association.
D: Man! What a percolating—to borrow Reince Priebus’
description of the candidates the GOP has lined up for the primaries and the
midterms—dunce. Governor Chris Christie should be sentenced to roadwork with a
traffic cone upon his crown. He’s an arrogant rogue who gained stature via the
Bush Dynasty, like Senator Ted Cruz from Texas.
M: Dude! It is interesting how the Tea Party and the
Republican Party are in agreement over Jeb Bush running for the United States
presidency. However, what concerns me most about the Tea Party and the
Republican Party mindsets is how superficial, if not absent, their alternatives
are to what the progressives have introduced.
D: Man! It is frightening. Eric Cantor was asked again and
again about the GOP retreat he boasted about having attended last week to Major
Garrett sitting in for Bob Schieffer on Face
The Nation. Cantor couldn’t list one concrete proposal that he and his Tea
Party Republican colleagues had drafted at the obviously nontransparent
retreat, which the American Press apparently did not find nontransparent enough
to actually go after as they do always appear to be targeting the President of
the United States and his cabinet, around whom they plea for more and more
transparency.
M: Dude! Talking about nontransparent ways of the Tea Party
and the Republican GOP, NBC News’ Rich Gardella and Lisa Myers reported that
even after 2 years since Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg’s gifting $100 million
dollars to Newark, New Jersey’s public schools, quote unquote the
biggest chunk- almost $10 million- has paid for administrative and operational
items to help analyze the entire school system and, backers of the initiative
hope, transform it.
D: Man! According to the 2010 U.S. Census, Newark spent
approximately $22K per student. However, when Gardella and Myers, who have been
following this story since Zuckerberg came on the Oprah Winfrey show and
pledged the $100 million with Chris Christie’s presence and enthusiasm
challenging that of Winfrey’s in
October 2010, asked parents last year for their opinion, the parents
resoundingly shared their perspective that the money gifted did not necessarily
get invested towards their children’s betterment.
M: Dude! Yes! And the junior high parents specifically
shared the need for desks and books as well as enhancing the education
experience for their children so that they are better prepared for the coming
years of high school and have a greater chance of availing and achieving
collegiate degrees.
D: Man! Books? Really? The need for books doesn’t jive with
the Zuckerberg-financed Foundation for Newark’s Future’s 2011-2012 book
initiative My Very Own Library, or
MVOL. There are three book fairs arranged throughout an academic school year
and students can choose up to 10 books annually. But wouldn’t it be better to
equip classrooms with iMacs and utilize the school library and the public
library for books? If I were Mark Zuckerberg, I would do so immediately and, as
a requisite to graduate from one grade to the next, I would instruct teachers
in the iBooks Author application and have every child construct their own
personal iBook.
M: Dude! I would love to see those iBooks on iTunes!
D: Man! I would like to implement a similar program of
instruction for our veterans and their families. Having access to an iMac is a
beautiful life altering experience that every American in the United States
deserves access to, whether in a public library or a careers center on a local
community college campus.
M: Dude! Instead of science fairs and history fairs,
children ought to have to create an iBook that covers a particular topic of
interest that their teachers must deem acceptable and appropriate. Imagine a
world where authorship is not a privilege but a human endeavor available to all
who seek it.
D: Man! Imagine the possibility of all war veterans
communicating their anguish and loss on the battlefields in their own iBooks. If
I were a church or organization, I would secure 1,000 ISBNs from the ProQuest
affiliate Bowker, as in R.R. Bowker, LLC, the only agency officially providing
ISBNs in the United States.
M: Dude! That book initiative you mentioned before, MVOL,
probably buys discounted discards nowadays. But we need tomorrow today and
ASAP! And Bexar County Judge Nelson Wolff has brought tomorrow closer to the
residents of the low-income district located inside San Antonio, Texas.
D: Man! That library in Bexar County, San Antonio is
unprecedented! Its special projects coordinator is Laura Cole, the person who
researched exhaustively for a similar concept in the United States and found
none. Apparently, the projects on the books were concocted but never carried
out. Probably had a menacing insider like Chris Christie pocketing the money
there as well. But, luckily, Laura Cole was fortunate to have been located in a
Democratic district where leaders like Representative Lloyd Doggett held
themselves accountable for the implementation and the execution of projects
like the country’s first digital library in Bexar County: bexarbibliotech.org
M: Dude! BiblioTech, as the library is known, offers 18,000 titles
and consists of 48 iMacs, an “iPad bar”, and a room equipped with Microsoft devices
like Xbox 360, Surface touch-screen video tables containing educational interactive
games by Kaplan.
D: Man! You can actually check out their Macbook Pros and
iPads for use within the library and there are 600 e-readers for at-home use.
The library has had people as far away as Hong Kong and the Netherlands come
and watch its incredible operation. Judge Wolff was inspired by Isaacson’s biography
of Steve Jobs and the efforts being made to digitalize the New York Public
Library. I miss Steve Jobs!
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